The Scam Recordings:

The Screaming Jets 5th studio album had began life as a 5 track EP before the band was to put together a full length album in the same sort of vein that “Living in England” was before the “Tear Of Thought” album. Recording began in December 1998 at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne and five days were allocated to complete the whole project. Although the sessions were considered successful, the band returned to the road unable to finish the recordings. Eventually they decided to forget about the EP idea and get back into the studios to record an extra ten tracks. Another session followed a few months later. Time was against them this time though and they were again unable to complete what they had planned. Another session in Melbourne – the third – another few months later had the band believing the albums completion was near. It was about this time that politics took over and the band were told by their old record company BMG that there would be a “best of” album being released whether they liked it or not. The band didn’t want to be involved in that, especially when they had signed a new contract with Universal records. This took a long time to resolve. Reluctantly, the band agreed to get involved in putting together “Hits and Pieces” and spent a lot of time putting together the info and artwork for the booklet. The record companies made a deal to include some of the ‘Scam’ tracks on the album, hoping to maximise the sales of both albums.

It took until the last moment for the band to accept that “Hits and Pieces” was actually coming out. “Individuality” was even released as preview to the “Scam” album on July 5th 1999. At the completion of a week of playing dates in Melbourne, the band extended their stay for another two days to complete further two tracks including “Survival of the Fit”. That song making the cut for the first version of ‘Scam’ and closed their live shows at the time. Both songs were eventually mothballed. These songs were recorded with Ross Wilson on board. Relations between band and manager Gary Rabin became too strained and eventually they parted ways. This caused a problem also as Ross Wilson has been managed by Rabin for 10 years and the band wanted no dealings with Rabin any more. The band decided that they wanted to include three new tracks they had recently got down in Dave’s lounge room. The band got their own way even though cover art for “Scam” had already been completed. Producer Steve James who had already worked on albums 1, 2 & 4 came in and the extra tracks were added. They were “The Protest Song”, Higher With You” and “Don’t Be Sorry”. “SCAM” was eventually released on October 9th , 2000

A interview with “SCAM” producer Ross Wilson and some of his thoughts on the recording of the album.

Ross Wilson has been a legend in Australian music for over 25 years after hitting the big time as Daddy Cool with one of the biggest hits of all time in ‘Eagle Rock’. From there he continued success through Mondo Rock and many other bands. Ross has produced half a dozen previous albums with Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, The Johnnys and the like but many may not realise his CV includes producing the first 3 Skyhooks albums.

I was fortunate to get an opportunity to interview Ross although at the time of this story, unknown to us, SCAM was still a year away and would go through many more changes.
I began by asking Ross how he got involved with the Screaming Jets…

“We had the same manager in Gary Rabin who has been my manager for 10 years and has been managing the Jets for the past 2 years. I hadn’t been producing much for a while, just my own stuff. Gary was trying to get me back into it and I went along to a couple of Jets shows and thought yeah this is pretty cool and Gary had been saying to them that they should try me out. They gave me a demo cd of about 20 tracks and a bunch of those I liked. We had a meeting and even tried to write a song together ( Temporary Blindness) even though they had enough songs, we never quite finished it. We had another talk and said yeah..lets do it.”

“We did a couple of sessions at Sing Sing studios and inbetween I went to Sydney for a couple of days where we pulled a whole lotta tracks apart and put them back together again. I thought they had some great ideas for choruses but for my liking they didn’t extend them enough. That was kinda my role. It took all up about 15 days to finish which is very quick for an album that has turned out as classy as it has.Dave’s big thing in the studio was that all the previous producers on albums he has worked with make him wait to the last couple of days and the guitarists hog all the time doing overdubs and he has to do his bit at the very end and he hated that. So I said we won’t do that so we tried to finish tracks as we went along.”

It was really good working with Dave, he pretty much has the song all scoped out beforehand and he comes in and sings in tune and its all terrific. To me it was a dream because most vocalists are real fussy, me included, and need 5 – 6 takes. Someone like Izzy who I knew could do it, had a lot of down time in the studio so i would say to him that I would need a guitar solo in this song and one in this song in a couple of days and he’d go off and work on it. Sure enough he’d wander back in and I’d go your up Izzy. He’d play his bit and in a couple of takes its done. Which was wonderful because you dont have to agonise about someone losing the vibe. He’d gone away and thought about it sort of like Dave and his vocals.

What songs jumped out at you from the start?

I liked “Individuality” I guess because its got that early punk vibe to it but rockin real hard at the same time and I really liked the chorus of that and just the general energy. A couple of others had possibilities, one of which was “Realise” which we did a fair bit of re-arranging on and ‘ESFD’ which we also did a fair bit of re-arranging on. The demo went kinda funky at the end and I wanted that throughout the song so we did that. also ‘I Need Your Love’ which is a real anthem kind of thing. We recorded it once and didnt really like it and we rehearsed it more and came up with all these ideas and it was really worth doing that. I think of producer as a prod user cause I’d go and poke them a bit and get them turning over cause the danger of being in a band environment, you get the band dynamic and no one really wants to rock the boat so its up to me to do that.

You played harmonica on one track, How did that come about?

Well I like playing the harp, thats where I started and I’m reasonably good at it. I heard ‘Overexcited’ and its a very poppy construction and I kept hearing old Kinks, Beatles kinda things in my head and I thought it could stand some harmonica so I had a go at it and they left it in. On ‘Realise’ and ‘Shine Over Me’, I thought they would be good with 12 string with that bubbling away in the background which added a tonal quality to the sound. One of my approaches to producing is to try and give each song something distictive thts not on the other tracks

Did you go back and listen to old Jets albums to get a feel for the sound?

No. I was more interested in sussing them out live because you get a better idea of where the band is at now, psychologically where the strengths and weaknesses are in the line up. Also you get to see what they are actually capable of.

Any tracks on the album that you think are ‘sleeper’ tracks?

I think ‘ESFD’ is fantastic musically and a real good song but it is a shame the lyric is at first like shock value but then you realise it’s actually saying something. Theres a couple that came up in the process of recording that turned out better than I expected. ‘Close To You’ turned out really well. i liked ‘I Need Your Love’ just as a big pop thing like ACDC revisited. It’s interesting they all have these reference points, like they love Australian rock and roll and they would drag things from that in there, sort of easybeats things in there on certain tracks. I think they got Aussie roots added onto the stuff they’ve taken from elsewhere.

Why do you think there aren’t many bands playing rock like the old days when you had Rose Tattoo, Angels, Cold Chisel, Mondo Rock…. playing all the time? It’s interesting that the Jets keep filling venues cause theres not a lot of competition around at the moment. I think everyone else out there is getting a bit precious. They all want to be the innovator blah blah blah. I’d rather them just get out there and play the songs and dig in. The Jets are moving forward, their not stuck in a time warp or anything, which is good. Their carrying the banners. The 80’s were a golden time in a way because the venues were thriving. Now theres so much dance music and the clubs are sorta fun to go to, great sound systems. I like a lot of the hip hop stuff, in fact if I work with the Jets again in the future, I wouldn’t mind getting a little bit of those elements in there, just a bit.

In closing I would like to add that I’m really happy with the album and I’m really glad I got involved because I’ve learned something from it and I’ve got enthused about producing again. I think if I found somebody i got along with and I liked their music then I’m available.

I would like to thank Ross for giving me some of his valuable time for this interview.